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  • 8 - Buying Antique Scientific Instruments at the Turn of the Twentieth Century: A Data-Driven Analysis of Lewis Evans’s and Robert Stewart Whipple’s Collecting Habits

  • Edited by Joshua Nall, University of Cambridge, Liba Taub, University of Cambridge, Frances Willmoth, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Whipple Museum of the History of Science
    Published online:
    19 August 2019
    Print publication:
    22 August 2019, pp 187-200
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  • Summary

    This chapter explores the early history of scientific instrument collecting through an assessment of the practices of two key collectors working in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century: Lewis Evans and Robert Whipple. The chapter focusses, in particular, on the presence of fake scientific instruments in the early trade in antique instruments. By using a data-driven analysis of the buying and selling of antique scientific instruments in the early years of the trade, a general picture of the preferences exhibited by different buyers and the features that added value to antique scientific instruments is presented. These factors and how they may have influenced the types of forgery that emerged are then considered. It is shown that fake scientific instruments were being sold at public auction as early as the 1890s, with at least one collector actively taking measures to spot them and avoid buying them.